Modern software development is evolving away from the client-server model toward network-based processing systems that provide access to data and services via the Internet or other networks. In contrast to traditional systems that host networked applications on dedicated server hardware, a “cloud” computing model allows applications to be provided over the network “as a service” supplied by an infrastructure provider. The infrastructure provider typically abstracts underlying hardware and other resources used to deliver an application so that the customer no longer needs to operate and support dedicated server hardware. The cloud computing model can often provide substantial cost savings to the customer over the life of the application because the customer no longer needs to provide dedicated network infrastructure, electrical and temperature controls, physical security and other logistics in support of dedicated server hardware. Cloud-based architectures have been developed to improve collaboration, integration, and community-based cooperation between customer entities without sacrificing data security. During operation, situations can arise in which data and/or other computing resources allocated to a customer need to be accessed by someone other than the customer (e.g., for maintenance).
Unfortunately, while conventional approaches can indeed grant to support users or administrators access to customer resources, there remains a need to provide customers and/or others with the ability to control the access granting process. Customers can, for instance, have special requirements that they would like to place upon those given access to the customer's resources in the cloud. By granting complete access to all support users, a conventional cloud environment makes customer resources unnecessarily available to greater numbers of users, contexts, confidentiality and/or other security risks, and/or other potentially disfavored scenarios. Therefore, what is needed is a remedy to this and other shortcomings of the traditional on line support access.